Saturday, October 27, 2012

Wear something fancy...

Hotline Miami is a very scary game.

Not traditionally scary. It isn't a game filled with
zombies, ghosts, or demons. All your enemies are human, or canine. They have no
supernatural abilities, and are found in regular everyday locations. Nothing
ever jumps out at you. There are no bizarre camera tricks or sound effects
messing with your perceptions. There is really just the blood to worry about.

(A lot of blood. Bucketfuls of the stuff. Perhaps the most
blood yet seen in a videogame. Or, if not, then certainly the most blood you
have ever perceived in one.)

Nor is it a particularly scary story. Or even, for that
matter, a particularly present one. We are walking down well-travelled pathways
here. Our nameless protagonist receives a phone call, detailing a job at an
address. We go there, we go in, and we kill everyone on the premises. We never
know why, or even who, we are killing. We just know that they all must die at
our hands. It's hardly Frankenstein. The sequences between the assignments are
a touch odd, in a Travis Bickle way, but never overtly so. Narration is absent,
and reason must be entirely inferred.

It is not even the atmosphere which is scary. To all
intents and purposes you are playing an extremely stripped down version of Vice
City. The garish neon-tinged colour scheme evokes the spirit of the 1980's as
completely as Rockstar's classic does, albeit in a heavily stylised manner. The
two-dimensional top-down view is that of some very blocky sprites. The blood
that flows is a uniform red, and pixellated to the extent that you will wonder
if you are playing a 10 year old mobile phone game. Graphically lacking in
detail, it looks more like a kids cartoon than the brutal journey you will
experience.

You can't even blame the music. You have to talk about the
music, because it is SO FUCKING COOL, but it is primarily used to set the tempo
of the game. The kind that overpowers the nonsense in between the levels due to
its sheer brilliance, but becomes your own inner soundtrack so that you don't
even notice it driving you when the action heats up.

None of these things are scary. All of these things
combined are not even scary.

What IS scary, and what makes Hotline Miami such an
unforgettable ride, is two little slices of genius design decision making.

The first is that you are, quite simply, fragile. A single
bullet from a single foe will end you. Even an unarmed thug can take you out
with one hit. If they hear you, they come looking for you. If they see you,
they come at you. If they attack first, you die. No second chances, no health
pickups, no messing about of any kind. Death is instant. Your only hope when
they carry a gun is that they miss with their first shot. Thankfully, the
enemies are just as susceptible to punishment as you are, and can be put down
just as quickly. A single bullet generally does the trick, although you also
might miss, and then face the realisation that the rest of them probably heard
you and are already on their way and OHSHITHESNOTDEADYET. Suddenly, decision
making is paramount, as it takes precious time to finish off a body that is
downed but not out. Kicking them in the head, strangling them, beating their
head repeatedly against the floor; they get it done, but leave you open to
attack.

You have to be quick. You need to know, instinctively, how
to tackle the room. To measure the odds, have a plan for what EXACTLY you need
to do as soon as you open that door, because as soon as you do the next half a
second determines if is they who die or you.

A lot of the time, it is you. Death is not only instant,
it is inevitable. Hotline Miami asks an awful lot of you, and carries within it
a hefty level of challenge. You will retry levels countless times, refining
your approach with every press of the R key. Getting slightly closer to your
goal with every attempt, until finally you are the only soul left alive.

At which point, moment of genius number two makes itself
known. The music, which you were barely aware of, stops. Suddenly, everything
is silent, all is still. You are done, everyone is dead, and all that is left
is to vacate the premises. This involves walking past the scores of dead
bodyguards that litter the floor.

Are they bodyguards? I'm not sure, I've never
been told. They just seem as if they are. I don't even know if they are bad
guys. The only certainty I can cling to is - "I did this. I killed
them", and all because a phone call, which didn't even mention murder,
told me to come here.

Hotline Miami is a very scary game. It is scary because it
is insidious. The violence should be sickening. The aesthetic leans
terrifyingly towards a celebration of murder, even going so far as to have you
don an animal mask as you viciously assault identikit enemies over and over and
over. Ostensibly, this is to endow you with abilities, but at the same time you
feel that this is just because THAT IS WHAT PSYCHOS DO, HAHAHAH! The eerie calm
after the storm gives you pause to reflect as you walk back past all those you
slaughtered in their respective pools of blood, before the next tiny slice of
cut-scene hints even more strongly that something just isn't right in this
world. The world even twists ever so slightly as you walk, and everything external to your goal
is indeterminate, as if it exists but is not worth you paying attention to.

It is probably as close as games have ever come to being a
genuine "murder simulator", because it leaves no room to describe it
as anything but. The bodycount is high, but it feels astronomical due to
playing through each floor of each building countless times. The background nature of the story
further erodes any moral high ground, and there are even questions to be asked
before we can say it has a neutral morality. The counter argument is, of course, the extreme difficulty. There can be
no doubt that, according to this game at least, murder is a dangerous and
difficult career path.